INTA Policy

["Martin B. Schwimmer" <martys@interport.net>]

Mikki Barry wrote:

>>Trademark law
>> is flexible enough to protect free speech, as in the U.S. case
>> Reddy Communications v. Environmental Action Foundation case in the
>> U.S., where an environmental group's use of a utility company's
>> REDDY KILOWATT logo was protected, while simultaneously protecting
>> the public from fraudulent speech where defendants misuse trademarks
>> to masquerade as their opponents in order to expose unwitting people
>> to their views.
>
>You have cited perhaps the one case where parody and free speech was
>protected. 

See Hormel v. Henson (SPA'AM),  Yankee v. News Amercia (Farmer's Almanac
case), L.L. Bean v. Drake, Stop Olympic Prison V. USOC.  


>I can cite you several more that did not turn out that way.


The point is that the law is flexible.  If you make your case, you win,
regardless of who you are.


>Most
>recently, Jews for Jesus v. Brodsky where religious speech was crushed
through
>use of a design trademark.  DNRC's amicus brief in support of the domain name
>holder can be found at www.domain-name.org/dnrcamicus.pdf (it will download
>the file in acrobat format).

You state that barring the use of jewsforjesus.org for anti-jews for jesus
purposes crushes religious speech.  What about the religious speech rights
of the Jews For Jesus Organization?  And how is speech crushed if Brodsky
had the opportunity of disseminating his views using the domain names
"I-oppose-jewsforjesus.org" or "brodsky.org")?

What are the ramifications of your position?  Would you defend:

nra.org for anti-handgun information
now.org for anti-feminism information
madd.org for promoting the alcohol lobby
baptist.org for anti-baptist information
christian-coalition.org for use by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance?

Are these the uses you think we should change existing law to accomodate?
Not only would domain names no longer map to trademarks, domain names would
not map to reality. The user would never be able to certain as to the
source of the information they are seeking. And that would crush free and
robust speech.

The Internet is big enough to accomodate every imaginable use.  I don't
think anything New IANA can do will overrule the First Amendment.  But I
think we can have a DNS which doesn't preserve duplicitous speech at the
expense of trademark and domain name owners.  The Consititution does not
protect duplicitous speech, why should New IANA?